bhabi , to be ill so much! Husbands get fed up.” My sweet, innocent sister-in-law Dolon, pure as air, always laughing! She could say what she wanted, but if she did not take care of me, Haroon would get angry. And if I did not recover or if Ranu got sick, she and Amma would be without a bou and stuck with all the housework. Amma never stopped grumbling if Rosuni got sick—and Rosuni was forever panicked that she would displease her mistress and lose her job. Temporarily, I was free of those worries. Dolon could not push me to get up and get busy. My misery was a kind of triumph: there was not a single person in the household who could now punish me, hassle me or do away with me.
Little Ranu came to visit me. Sitting at my feet, she sighed. She suffered herself from abdominal pains, but did anyone rush to her bedside? And Rosuni! Sitting hour after hour on the cold floor, she declared that to get well, I need only brush a plantain leaf against my belly then destroy it by fire. I did my best to smile at the poignancy of her good intentions.
7
E ven though the house where we lived belonged to Haroon, I thought of it as Amma and Abba’s house. After all, they seemed to run things. “Your house,” I would say to Amma. Haroon had no objection and Amma was only too pleased to crown herself with ownership. At the least provocation, she would go on about the authority her husband had once commanded.
It was Ranu who set me straight, “Whatever clout he had was in Noakhali where he was a clerk,” she said.
“But Amma said he was a big officer!” Ranu made a face.
“A minister in the government is what she’ll say next!”
Dolon came and stretched out by my side. She was full of talk about her daughter Somaiya, about how Amma and Abba wouldn’t let go of her “for a second.” They were mad about her, lost sleep if she spent even a day away. Dolon said she and Somaiya were living here because she was needed here, she said, to teach me, the new bou , how to run the household. “For the good of our family, I have left my heart
behind,” she sighed, but the minute she left the room, Ranu again set the story straight.
“That’s all nonsense, her in-laws have turned her out of the house. Go there and see for yourself!”
How Ranu could gather so much information when she sat in a corner all day crocheting was beyond me. How she was able to discern everyone’s hidden motives when she seemed to be paying no attention amazed me, but I certainly had no desire to become another Ranu. It’s true that I had once wanted to get away from it all, but I began to see how much Haroon flourished in the heart of his family. I now understood that he would never choose a less traditional existence. And I could hardly believe it, but I could feel our love returning! And I accepted it despite what Haroon had made me do. It was better to live with love in the wilderness, I told myself, than to be lonely in paradise.
I was becoming well again, basking in my husband’s love.
No one in the house knew that a child, our child, had been aborted, that our child had been taken from me in utmost secrecy. I still wept, but only to myself. Even Haroon, so close to me when we slept, was unaware. He’d started making love to me four days after the abortion, ignoring medical advice. I did not discourage him. How could I, still half believing myself a wanton woman? My husband had purified me, he believed, rid my womb of contamination. Chaste as a sacred virgin, I rose from the white sheets of our bed and walked feebly about the marital bedroom. I was a creature who sat in a kitchen that reeked of garlic, and, with Rosuni, cooked for her husband and her husband’s family. A perfect
bou , I prepared dishes to suit each of them, and, retiring at night, cloaked in wifely chastity, brought waves of pleasure to the husband who joined me between the sheets.
The doctor had advised that I take birth control pills for three months, so that my
Little Ranu came to visit me. Sitting at my feet, she sighed. She suffered herself from abdominal pains, but did anyone rush to her bedside? And Rosuni! Sitting hour after hour on the cold floor, she declared that to get well, I need only brush a plantain leaf against my belly then destroy it by fire. I did my best to smile at the poignancy of her good intentions.
7
E ven though the house where we lived belonged to Haroon, I thought of it as Amma and Abba’s house. After all, they seemed to run things. “Your house,” I would say to Amma. Haroon had no objection and Amma was only too pleased to crown herself with ownership. At the least provocation, she would go on about the authority her husband had once commanded.
It was Ranu who set me straight, “Whatever clout he had was in Noakhali where he was a clerk,” she said.
“But Amma said he was a big officer!” Ranu made a face.
“A minister in the government is what she’ll say next!”
Dolon came and stretched out by my side. She was full of talk about her daughter Somaiya, about how Amma and Abba wouldn’t let go of her “for a second.” They were mad about her, lost sleep if she spent even a day away. Dolon said she and Somaiya were living here because she was needed here, she said, to teach me, the new bou , how to run the household. “For the good of our family, I have left my heart
behind,” she sighed, but the minute she left the room, Ranu again set the story straight.
“That’s all nonsense, her in-laws have turned her out of the house. Go there and see for yourself!”
How Ranu could gather so much information when she sat in a corner all day crocheting was beyond me. How she was able to discern everyone’s hidden motives when she seemed to be paying no attention amazed me, but I certainly had no desire to become another Ranu. It’s true that I had once wanted to get away from it all, but I began to see how much Haroon flourished in the heart of his family. I now understood that he would never choose a less traditional existence. And I could hardly believe it, but I could feel our love returning! And I accepted it despite what Haroon had made me do. It was better to live with love in the wilderness, I told myself, than to be lonely in paradise.
I was becoming well again, basking in my husband’s love.
No one in the house knew that a child, our child, had been aborted, that our child had been taken from me in utmost secrecy. I still wept, but only to myself. Even Haroon, so close to me when we slept, was unaware. He’d started making love to me four days after the abortion, ignoring medical advice. I did not discourage him. How could I, still half believing myself a wanton woman? My husband had purified me, he believed, rid my womb of contamination. Chaste as a sacred virgin, I rose from the white sheets of our bed and walked feebly about the marital bedroom. I was a creature who sat in a kitchen that reeked of garlic, and, with Rosuni, cooked for her husband and her husband’s family. A perfect
bou , I prepared dishes to suit each of them, and, retiring at night, cloaked in wifely chastity, brought waves of pleasure to the husband who joined me between the sheets.
The doctor had advised that I take birth control pills for three months, so that my
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